I did not look up, I sat very tense with the red petals printing an indelible memory in my brain, but I felt the assent of Verrall’s pose.  There were some moments of silence.  Then Nettie spoke.  “But------” she said, and ceased.

I waited for a little while.  I sighed and leant back in my chair.  “It is perfectly simple,” I smiled, “now that we have cool heads.”

“But is it simple?” asked Nettie, and slashed my discourse out of being.

I looked up and found her with her eyes on Verrall.  “You see,” she said, “I like Willie.  It’s hard to say what one feels—­but I don’t want him to go away like that.”

“But then,” objected Verrall, “how------?”

“No,” said Nettie, and swept her half-arranged carnation petals back into a heap of confusion.  She began to arrange them very quickly into one long straight line.

“It’s so difficult------ I’ve never before in all my life tried
to get to the bottom of my mind.  For one thing, I’ve not treated
Willie properly.  He—­he counted on me.  I know he did.  I was
his hope.  I was a promised delight—­something, something to crown
life—­better than anything he had ever had.  And a secret pride. . . . 
He lived upon me.  I knew—­when we two began to meet together,
you and I------ It was a sort of treachery to him------”

“Treachery!” I said.  “You were only feeling your way through all these perplexities.”

“You thought it treachery.”

“I don’t now.”

“I did.  In a sense I think so still.  For you had need of me.”

I made a slight protest at this doctrine and fell thinking.

“And even when he was trying to kill us,” she said to her lover, “I felt for him down in the bottom of my mind.  I can understand all the horrible things, the humiliation—­the humiliation! he went through.”

“Yes,” I said, “but I don’t see------”

“I don’t see.  I’m only trying to see.  But you know, Willie, you are a part of my life.  I have known you longer than I have known Edward.  I know you better.  Indeed I know you with all my heart.  You think all your talk was thrown away upon me, that I never understood that side of you, or your ambitions or anything.  I did.  More than I thought at the time.  Now—­now it is all clear to me.  What I had to understand in you was something deeper than Edward brought me.  I have it now. . . .  You are a part of my life, and I don’t want to cut all that off from me now I have comprehended it, and throw it away.”

“But you love Verrall.”

“Love is such a queer thing! . . .  Is there one love?  I mean, only one love?” She turned to Verrall.  “I know I love you.  I can speak out about that now.  Before this morning I couldn’t have done.  It’s just as though my mind had got out of a scented prison.  But what is it, this love for you?  It’s a mass of fancies—­things about you—­ways you look, ways you have.  It’s the senses—­and